I found this little tid-bit at another place and this is the first time I've ever come across something like this....

"Is irritable bowel syndrome a low-grade inflammatory bowel disease?"

"Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS) is multifactorial in its etiology and heterogeneous in its clinical presentation and pathogenesis. It is recognized that inflammation plays an important role in symptom generation, at least in a subset of patients with IBS. Previous gastroenteritis has been identified as the most important risk factor for IBS, and several studies reported that a substantial proportion of patients with gastrointestinal infection develops IBS symptoms,which can persist for several years. Recent studies have demonstrated that a proportion of IBS patients without any history of enteritis has signs of immune activation in the gut. There is clinical overlap between IBS and inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), with IBS-like symptoms frequently reported in patients before the diagnosis of IBD, and a higher than expected percentage reports of IBS symptoms in patients in remission from established IBD. Thus,these conditions may coexist with a higher than expected frequency, or may exist on a continuum, with IBS and IBD at different ends of the same spectrum. This article examines these relation-ships using immune activation and inflammation as a common pathogenic process to IBD and a subset of IBS patients."

"These data clearly demonstrate that a considerable group of patients with microscopic colitis have diarrhea-predominant IBS- or functional diarrhea-like symptoms. Thus, patients with microscopic colitis could be misdiagnosed as IBS or functional diarrhea. Additionally, because of the high frequency of IBS, a disease overlap could be present in a subgroup of patients as it was shown between IBS and celiac disease[3]. We conclude that the clinical symptom-based criteria of IBS are not specific enough to rule out the diagnosis of microscopic colitis. Therefore, patients with diarrhea-predominance of IBS-like symptoms should undergo matrix biopsies from the entire colon to investigate for possible microscopic colitis especially biopsies from the right colon are of importance because the left colon sometimes is less involved."http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/11/6409.asp

Wow, good stuff. That'd explain weirdos like Sarita ( ) who have some of the symptoms of IBD, but not all of them. Also explains her low-grade fever that comes and goes. Maybe most of us with IBS-D have varying levels of the exact same colitis.

Anyone ever notice that we need an emoticon that's green and sick looking? There's the one that can go with your post (not in it) that looks like it's in pain, but we need one that looks sickly too. Or maybe a throbbing stomach or large intestines. Lol.